Tuesday, March 27 (Day 11): More game drives in the Masai Mara

From the same position we looked a little farther to the South and saw a herd of elephants heading down from the escarpment toward the river in the distance. Willie told us that every evening the elephants go up onto the escarpment to spend the night, and every morning they come back down to the plains and the river. We had to lighten up both of these pictures (above and below) with the scanner to show the detail you can see; the prints were much darker.

Headin' for the river. The routine morning trek.

We were headed generally South along the escarpment for a few miles, looking especially hard for some "Chuis!" (leopards). After about a half-hour of no animal sightings but looking in every tree we passed, we took the picture below just to show how pretty the scenery was, even on a cloudy day.

A cloudy morning, but pretty!

A few minutes later one of us saw a lump in a distant tree and headed in that direction. It turned out to be only vultures! In disappointment we took their picture anyway, and headed away from the escarpment down into the flat plains.

We never did positively identify these. Maybe Nubian vultures. Call them African Vultures!

Willie had to drive fairly slowly through the high grass because there were quite a few wet, muddy spots after the rain showers of the day before. We came to one low area that had formed a water hole, like a small pond, and realized that there was a LOT of noise coming from the pond. We had no idea if it was birds, animals or insects making this loud almost screeching noise, but it was constant. Willie smiled and said, "Frogs!" He pulled up beside the pond, and the noise stopped completely! It was perfectly quiet. Then he turned off the engine and we sat still. After a few seconds, the first tentative "Breeeeeep, breeeeeep" began, quickly followed by another and another until there were hundreds of them all going strong! What a racket! We wished we had brought a small cassette recorder, just to bring back that sound. We knew no one would believe it had been as loud as it was. Linda commented about experiencing the sights and SOUNDS of Africa. Later we added "and the SMELLS" to that list, but that was later.

Willie started up the engine to drive off, and immediately it was dead quiet again! We laughed and pulled away. Behind us we could hear the chirping slowly rise to a crescendo as we moved off.

Just a very few minutes later we passed a tree and saw on a thick limb a sight that we laughed and laughed at, but unless you had seen it, I'm sure it won't sound the least bit funny. A lilac-breasted roller (picture below) was perched on that limb, holding a dead frog in its bill. We had just left a pond that must have had hundreds of frogs in and around it, and we wondered if that was where the bird found its breakfast. Anyway, the bird was just thrashing the dickens out of that frog by beating its body into the limb while holding it in its beak. He reminded me of a golfer, rotating his head back holding the frog, like a backswing, then slamming the frog around, forward and down, right into the limb. He did it again, and again, and again, "Wham! Wham! Wham!" The frog was clearly dead. We joked about "tenderizing" the frog, but Willie guessed that the frog was a bit too big for the bird to swallow whole, so he was trying to "whip it down" to a manageable size. A week later we would still laugh when someone mentioned that bird just beating the heck out of that dead frog!

You ought to see the video Linda took of this to really appreciate it!

Continuing toward the Southeast, at about 7:50 we still hadn't seen much in the way of wildlife so took another picture of the scenery. We realized that scenery pictures might seem boring compared to all the unusual birds and animals we were seeing, but for someone who's never been to this part of the world it's nice to get a visual idea of the landscape and surroundings. All my wonderful descriptive text can't replace a picture of the real thing. Let's see, how many words is one picture worth…?

"Mara" means "dotted plains." These are the "dots."

As happened often, about the time I thought we weren't going to see anything but pretty scenery, we just happened upon two female lions sitting right in the road! This was only 8 minutes after the scenery picture above. These two looked like they had just awakened from a long sleep and weren't fully alert yet - but none of us offered to hop out and see if they were really active or not.

"Don't expect ANYTHING out of me before I've had my morning coffee!"

Eventually they became tired of being stared at and talked about, so they slowly got up and sauntered off toward the North, looking completely unconcerned about anything. We drove on toward the Southeast. And drove. And drove.

Fully a half hour later (8:30 AM) we came upon four cheetahs. Willie was of the opinion that these were the same four we had seen and photographed the day before. I wasn't able to identify them that closely. Frankly, I was proud to be able to correctly identify them as "cheetahs!" The group the day before had been very active and playful. These were definitely in a "resting" mode.

Checking out all points of the compass. Ignoring us!

By the way, in case you're wondering about my ability to remember at exactly what time we saw and did different things, I guess I'd better confess. One of the features of our camera is that it records the date and time of each picture. This information can be printed right on the back of each print. I'm sorry to disappoint those who were so impressed by my superior memory and brain power. Carol will tell you that it's rare that both of my brain cells are active at the same time, which is why I can almost never do more than one thing at a time (like walk OR talk, not both).

After a morning of very little wildlife to see, suddenly at 8:30 we began to have much better luck. We were heading towards the Mara River, where Willie planned to set up our picnic breakfast. After the cheetahs we were treated to a good sighting of a black-backed jackal, who let us get quite close and posed for us at 8:44.

Pointing at something! A bird dog should take a "point" this well!

Just a minute later we saw a hyena slinking through the grass, and were able to get a pretty clear shot of her. She had obvious swollen milk glands. Linda mentioned that she must have a nursing litter nearby, but there was no sign of a hole or den.

A mama hyena, but no sign of any cubs.

Quite close to the river, at 8:48, we took a close picture of a Thompson's gazelle. This turned out to be the best picture of the entire trip of a "Tommie," although we saw them practically everywhere.

A "Tommie," with distinctive "racing stripe" down the side. Nice horns!

As we pulled into the area where Willie planned to serve us our "box breakfasts," we saw a fairly large, black bird on the ground with something in its beak. It turned out that the "something" was a frog (what was it with birds and frogs that day?). The bird, Willie told us, was a "ground hornbill." We thought he was saying "Crowned," not "ground," but the wildlife book says clearly "ground." We caught a glimpse of the bright red "wattle" around this bird's large curving bill, and you can see it in the picture. Unfortunately this bird was bashful, causing another of Linda's comments, "East end going West."

At the place were we stopped for breakfast, the flat ground near the riverbank was a good 8 to 10 feet above the level of the water. We got out of the land cruiser and strolled toward the river, looking over the edge of the bank into the water below. There we saw an unusual sight. During the trip, especially later on the Zambezi River, we saw dozens of crocodiles. They were almost always sunning on the banks and would invariably slide into the water as soon as they sensed the presence of someone or something in their vicinity. And they would always disappear into the depths. However, below is a picture of what we saw at this river:

 
Ground hornbill with frog. At right: a croc eyes us warily.

This guy was actually swimming along, very visibly, and giving us the evil eye. It looked like he was thinking, "Come on down here and have a swim with me! Heh, Heh, Heh!"

Before Willie would let us wander over to some nearby bushes to "stretch our legs," he had to check out the area first. He said he was more concerned about buffalo than lions, although either one was dangerous. A startled buffalo is probably more deadly than a startled lion, unless the lion decides it's meal time. Typically lions only kill to eat. The buffalo, by contrast, will charge, gore and trample someone just because they feel like it. Anyway, we gladly let Willie "clear the area" for us before we went off looking for a private bush.

Our "box breakfast" was a real treat. Willie had hot water for our choice of tea, instant coffee, or hot chocolate; plus fruit juice, a sweet roll, a link-style sausage, some quiche, an orange and a small banana, a small biscuit, and a hard roll. None of us could eat all of it! He had spread out on the ground a blanket for us to sit on if we wished, but since we spent most of our time sitting in the vehicle, we preferred to stand while we ate. It also gave us a chance to look around at the scenery.

Looking away from the river we could see a number of animals not too far away. With the help of the binoculars we were able to tell that there were a number of gazelles and some zebras nearby. Willie told us we would be heading in that direction (mostly South) after our meal, so we finished up, picked up everything making sure there was no evidence of our intrusion left behind, piled into the Land Cruiser and headed out at about 9:10 AM. The next picture was taken just a few hundred yards from the picnic spot, and includes the zebras and gazelles we had seen, plus some warthogs moving across the background. It seemed that wildlife viewing was either feast or famine.

More evidence of the slimming effect of horizontal stripes. Tommies at right, with hard-to-see warthogs at left.

One unusual thing we noticed in this area was the number of bones and partial skeletal remains visible on the ground. One explanation may have been that the grass here was very low and sparse for some reason. Not for lack of rain - the ground was not particularly hard or dry looking. Maybe it was due to animals grazing, as there had been a lot of gazelles in the area. In any case, we saw a lot of bones and wondered if this was a killing zone for predators. And if so, where were the predators? During the trip we saw several skulls and horns (from buffalo or gazelles) that would have made a really nice "trophy" back home, but as Les and Linda pointed out, there would be no way to get them out of Kenya through Customs or into the United States through the agricultural inspection folks who always ask if you are bringing any plant or animal products into the country.

After this wildlife viewing "feast" experience, we entered the "famine." The terrain began to rise and fall a bit more as we kept moving South, with some hills that were nearly like the kopjes of the Serengeti. We drove around them, looking carefully for lions, cheetahs, or anything that moved, with no luck. Fully an hour after seeing the zebras and gazelles above, we found a lone black-backed jackal moving through the grasses, then at 10:30 a secretary bird showed off her feathery "pens" for us.

 
A long-legged, black-backed jackal. At right: a long-legged secretary bird with her "pens" lying flat.

Willie kept heading us generally South. Looking ahead we saw what appeared to be a tree stump about four feet tall with a flat top and very straight sides. As we approached it turned out to be a concrete marker, delineating the border between Kenya and Tanzania. Across the triangular top was a line inscribed in the concrete with a "K" on one side and a "T" on the other. Willie explained that the letters stood for "Kenya" and "Tanzania," while the line marked the actual border itself. He told us that if we looked along the line in each direction we ought to be able to just barely see the next marker. We tried, using the binoculars, and thought we saw one looking Northwest, but could see nothing looking Southeast. We took a couple of pictures of the marker, then Linda took some video of the rest of us standing with one foot in each country or clowning around going back and forth "illegally" entering and exiting the countries without passport control.

There were also some numbers inscribed on the top of the marker, a "19" on one side, and a "4" on the other. This was to identify that particular marker to a surveyor. Later, back in camp, we saw a map of the area with each border marking post indicated and some numbers beside it. We found, on the map, the one we had been standing by. Here are a couple of pictures of what I'm describing.

In that immediate vicinity were some gazelles and one lone wildebeest. Any time we saw a larger gazelle, like a wildebeest, hartebeest or topi all by itself, we called it "Simba chakula," Swahili for "Lion food."

South of the border, a lone wildebeest trolls for lions. Thompson's gazelles look on.